Hello, Jalapeno Lover! Happy New Year! I seriously can't believe it is already 2015. I am both shocked and excited. The holidays are over and they were fun, with plenty of time spent with family and friends, but 2015 promises travel and plenty of jalapeno peppers! Yes! I can't wait. Alas, we are in the throes of winter, but that doesn't stop us from enjoying some of our favorite meals. You just have to go with the flow. Like how. Here we go! Onto the newsletter.

A recipe for salmon encrusted with pecans and topped with a sweet pepper pesto sauce and roasted jalapeno peppers. Extra jalapeno peppers for me, please. We served ours with rigatoni noodles to help scoop up the pesto. Yum.

Pesto! The uber-Italian sauce that is one of life's perfect treats. We're both major suckers for a good pesto. Traditional is awesome, of course, but you can add in some variations to bring in new flavors. Like chili peppers. Or how about roasted chili peppers? Yes!

Happy New Year! Cheers to 2015! As the new year approaches, we like to reflect on the previous year and all the good that came from it. Patty and I are so thankful to all of our family and friends, both old and new, and we appreciate having everyone in our lives. We had a wonderful year in business and we made it through healthy, which is the most important thing. Mike had a productive year with his writing. He released another cookbook this year, finished two feature film screenplays, and is nearing the release of a novel publication early next year. Can the guy stop writing? Patty became even more heavily involved with the Chili Pepper Madness web site, which resulted in the relaunch, and she also took several photography courses and is really learning. Such a fun year!

The big New Year's Eve bash in the neighborhood is getting close and we're teaming up with some of the other neighbors to pull off an evening of elegant small plates. It's a big menu with 9 items as well as a raw bar. I am in charge of the stuffed mushrooms, butternut squash-scallop risotto, 4-cheese-asparagus tarts, and the pork roulade. Here is the dry run of the pork. I'm used to cooking for two, or sometimes smaller groups, but we're having close to 30 people this year so I like to do dry runs.

Whenever Patty has a girls night out, I get to make anything I want. Oftentimes that is chicken wings because I make them as hot as I want. That may include Moruga Wings or Reaper Wings, but not this time. This time I went Thai style. I had myself some bright Orange Thai Chili Peppers and they were screaming for a Thai version of this recipe. These particular peppers aren't very hot. They're quite mild, in fact. You can spice things up with powders or with additional red Thai peppers, but we're focusing on flavor here. You grind them up into a paste with garlic and peanuts and that forms the base of your sauce. I used my molcajete for this. Like this! Here is your paste. Keep grinding.

Cooking is an art. When you first learn to cook, it’s a bit different, especially when you don’t have a teacher standing over you. You follow recipes step by step at first, stumbling along the way, until one day you pick up methods and begin to alter recipes, then create your own. Soon after, you’ll start to realize you need more tools in the kitchen to make things a little easier. Or better.

Hi everybody, it’s Patty. Most of our posts are from Mike because I leave the cooking to him. But he leaves the drinks to me. I’ve been dubbed the neighborhood mixologist and when I realized that today was National Sangria Day, and I just happened to be going to a neighborhood party, it was a no brainer.

Stuffed peppers! Did you know that we have a slight obsession with stuffed chili peppers? Considering that I wrote an entire cookbook dedicated to them, I'm sure it will come as no surprise, but it has to be said - the stuffed chili pepper is a cause for celebration. This recipe uses the sweet bell pepper. We were at the local grocery store, working our way through the produce section, and these peppers leaped into the cart. Look at the colors. The brightness, the vivid orange and yellow, the plumpness of the skins. They were begging to be stuffed. Since the holidays are arriving and we both need to hold back on the calorie intake in preparation for all the upcoming celebration eating, we opted for a lighter fare recipe this time.

I've said this many times - chili peppers are the ideal vessels for stuffing. Not all of them, of course, but there are so many large ones out there in the world, just begging for you to stuff them. The larger peppers tend to be sweeter and milder, with thicker flesh that stand up to baking or your preferred preparation. Stuffed peppers are also the perfect meal. A veggie serving in every bite! You can turn any number of meals into a stuffed pepper meal. For this recipe, I used the sweet Liebesapfel chili pepper. Liebesapfel, you say? Yes, I did! It is a cute little pepper that looks quite a bit like an apple or a tiny gourd or pumpkin. The flavor is sweet and the flesh is rather thick, though not as thick as a sweet bell pepper. The name is German and it means "Love Apple". Very cool name, if you ask me, and I think you WILL love this pepper. Learn more about the Liebesapfel Chili Pepper Here.

Talk about fun. Patty had a gathering in the neighborhood with a number of her girlfriends for a cookie night. It wasn't so much an exchange, but more an excuse to get together, have a few cocktails, socialize, and eat cookies. All of our friends know how much we enjoy spicy food, so this was an opportunity to play with cookies. Spicy cookies, you might ask? Absolutely. Chocolate and spice always pair well. I like to put a bit of chocolate or cocoa into certain chili recipes, and there are a number of chocolate bars on the market that incorporate chili powders. The key is finding the proper spice level.

Three words. Goat. Cheese. Guacamole. Over seared beef burgers. Yes! And plenty of roasted jalapeno peppers. We usually cook our burgers in the summer, when I can fire up the grill and sit outside with a beer, feel the sun on our faces, just sort of hang out and enjoy the backyard. But last night there was a hankering. Can't we just have a burger? Yes, we can. Get yourself some ground chuck. It's more flavorful for burgers. 80/20 is good - that's 20 percent fat. Sure, it might be more fat than you want, but this is a beef burger. You might as well go all the way.

100+ classic and original jalapeno popper and stuffed chili pepper recipes and more! If you love jalapeno poppers, you'll love this collection of recipes with notes on coring, breading, sauces, stuffing ideas and more, along with unique recipes and those you've seen in restaurants.

Here are some reviews:

"Never fails another great cook book. The recipies are simple and great detail is given on each one. if you are a Chilihead you will LOVE the book"

"All of Michael's jalapeno recipe books are wonderful. This one has lots of great ideas for stuffed jalapenos and poppers. We eat a lot of jalapenos at my house and my husband particularly loves stuffed jalapenos. I am always looking for new ways to cook them. This book is filled with lots of ideas. I usually cook mine on the grill but am planning to try some of his baked poppers and "armadillo eggs". There are also recipes for stuffing other types of peppers, including bell peppers and many other types of peppers. I have been looking for more good recipes for Poblano peppers and there are some that look tasty in this book."

"The book was everything I needed, great recipes, easy to follow and the ones I've already made were yum, yum, yum"

"I purchased this along with a stainless chili pepper roasting rack for my dad for Christmas--he is the grill pro in our family. He absolutely loves it and has already picked several recipe ideas for Super Bowl Sunday. Great book!! "

We've been working hard over in the Madness home. We've completely rebuilt the Chili Pepper Madness site from the bottom up and, wow, has it been some work! But we're excited. The new site is completely responsive in design, meaning it is optimized for all machines, including tablets and smart phones. It is much more interactive with comments, search features, better photos and just a better site overall. Come on over and visit us today. Plenty of jalapeno pepper recipes!